Paper Thin
by Brightbless
Summary: Clary Morgenstern just moved into a new apartment in a new city with her father and brother. Too bad that right next to her lives Jace Herondale, and unfortunately the walls of the apartment are paper thin, just like the walls she built around herself as a shield. CLACE. All Human / High School AU. MALEC and SIZZY in later chapters


**Hey Guys!**

 **So this is a new fanfic that I had started some days ago! It is AU, but I will try to stay loyal to the character's personalities.**

 **This isn't a songfic, but the singing part is important for later on in the story.**

 **Lyrics used from: Can't help falling in Love by Elvis Presley, but while writing this I had the Cover from Twenty one Pilots playing in the background, because it is amazing!**

 **Anyway, enjoy.**

It was late.

The sun was going down, coloring the sky into a bright orange that matched the falling leaves that circled around her until they finally reached the ground at her feet. September was without any doubt the most beautiful month of all, and Clary was dead sure of that when she looked around her surroundings, examining the scenery in front of her.

Trees to her left, and trees to her right, forming a path in the middle that she was currently walking on. Everything was red, the leaves, the bushes, the benches, and for once she felt like her flaming red hair wasn't out of place. She felt like she belonged into this colorful mess, and maybe, thinking about it, she even did.

Her fingers ached with the old reflex to paint this picture of a girl walking a path surrounded by autumn trees, but she simply swallowed that down and kept her hands in her pockets.

The girl felt a cold breeze tickling her face and hid half of it in the scarf wrapped around her neck. Breathing in the smell of the scarf, lemon and roses, just like everything else that belonged to her, she closed her eyes for a short moment.

Clary opened them just in time to see that she reached the end of the path, standing in front of her house now. After struggling to find the keys in her pocket, she finally got them out and opened the door of her new home.

It was an old house, with a few apartments. It was old, but pretty. The house wasn't just simply standing there, it was like a living thing, something no one could cross without turning around to look at it again. They mainly had taken the apartment on the last floor because of its small prize, but she had to admit, it hadn't been a bad decision.

She got up the – what seemed to her like a thousand – stairs that slightly cracked under her small weight and unlocked her door, kicking it open and entering her apartment with a loud sigh as she threw herself on the couch.

She was exhausted, but it felt like the kind of tired sleep couldn't fix anymore.

There were still boxes everywhere in her apartment because she just never actually got to pack them all out, and because probably the apartment didn't feel like home yet, so she didn't want to see her things all around it in such a strange place.

Johnathan and her Dad also hadn't actually packed anything out, but mostly because John was too busy with work and school and _breathing_ , and their Dad – well, the few times he was at home his mind was still completely somewhere else, and she would probably get more help from a pet than from him.

She jumped when she heard a loud crack! but then rolled her eyes as she realized where the sound came from. Next time, she promised herself, she would personally check how thick the walls really are before buying the apartment, because how it came out, her walls were thin as paper.

What caused her various nights of not sleeping because of the sounds coming from the bedroom next to hers, whether it was loud music, sounds of someone throwing rocks on the floor or … well, the other kind of things you can expect to hear from the bedroom of a Teenage boy...

She hasn't actually ever met him, and she didn't even want to.

Clary sat up and headed to the bathroom, because suddenly her skin felt so sweaty and disgustingly dirty and she just needed a shower to clear her mind and pretend that the water could wash away her thoughts and feelings. And – memories.

Stumbling into the small bathroom she quickly got rid of all her clothes, throwing them all on the floor ( she'd have to wash them all later anyway ) and climbing into the shower, turning the hot water on.

There was a very long sigh that immediately escaped her lips as she felt the warm water prickle on her skin. It felt so good to finally have all the dirt and sweat washed away, that she closed her eyes to relax a little more and leaned her head on the shower wall.

Her wet hair was clinging to her body and she decided after a few minutes of simply standing there to pick up the bottle of shampoo. Right when she wanted to wash the shampoo out of her hair, she heard her phone ring.

She silently cursed under her breath – couldn't she for once have a relaxing shower without being interrupted? And who would call her, anyway.

She decided she didn't care, it could wait. Whoever it was, they could survive another thirty minutes if they wanted to talk to a clean Clary Morgenstern.

So she just let her phone ring, the ringing song playing in the background. It was a cover of an old Elvis Presley song and it completely broke the silence, but she didn't mind.

She closed her eyes again, the melody of _Can't help falling in love_ playing in the background, quieted by the sound of the water pouring on her skin, reminding her of why she chose this particular song.

There were so, so many pictures suddenly rushing back in her mind, pictures of her Dad and Mom singing this song, dancing in the kitchen while John and Clary would run around them singing along to the song they knew by heart from all the times their Dad had sung it to their Mother.

Their voices would be louder than the old, crappy car radio and Johnathan would try to swing Clary around but his seven year old self is so small, so young and weak and he drops her immediately.

The reality now looked different, but every time she heard this song she was back in their old living room, her hand in John's.

She took in the lyrics like a drug and her mind emptied completely and suddenly, without really realizing it, she was singing, she was singing along to the song, the words falling from her lips. She often sung under the shower but this time it felt extra relaxing and calming.

Now her back was completely pressed to the shower wall and her voice sounded more like her Mother's in her ears, and then she heard her Father's voice

Suddenly she stopped.

She opened her eyes and stood properly again, turning around to face the wall.

It hadn't been imagination, no, she had actually heard a male voice sing along to the song.

What the actual …

She was still wondering as the voice sang along again, a young, clear, beautiful voice. She was still and didn't even dare to breath as she placed her ear on the wall, trying to hear it better, but his voice was low and quiet, only enough to guess at which part he was currently.

Clary didn't know what to think. All she had ever heard of her neighbor had been the things that would so often fall down. But this. This actually left her speechless.

And for a short moment she felt so exposed, so vulnerable, because here she had been singing to a song that she connected with so many precious memories and he had been listening, and then he even started singing along to it and took this little privacy that she had left from her.

But then again there was this voice, and god damn, it was so hard to be mad at him when she heard a voice like his.

Before she knew what she was doing, she was singing again, and their both voices – hers, soft, nice, not made for singing but something you could listen to, something relaxing and then his, low, rough, a little cold but it sounded so broken – mixing together.

" _Take my hand,  
take my whole life too,  
for I can't help falling in love with you._

The ringing tone had long stopped, and soon, after the last line, their voices did too, and everything quieted into silence again.

For a few seconds she was just staring at the wall that separated them before she immediately started washing her hair from the shampoo, and curled herself in a towel as soon as she managed to, stumbling out of the shower and into her room, slamming the door behind her.

But not before she heard him slam his door as well.

Oh, how she hated them, this paper thin walls.

* * *

"Clary?" she heard John yell.

"Overeeere", she yelled back from the kitchen.

"Wha – how often have I told you to first eat and then speak?"

Clary tried to smile, her mouth still full with the biscuit she was currently eating.

"That would be wasting time."

"Since when is being a grown up, respectable person wasting time?"

She swallowed the least bit of biscuit down all at once before answering: "Since it means that I'll have to wait several minutes before I can answer you. Anything could happen in that time. What if you suddenly die? I wouldn't be able to tell you all the things I would have wanted you to know just because I was eating?"

John shook his head, his blond locks falling in his green eyes. He carried the bags of food he bought in the kitchen and heaved them on the kitchen table. "And what is it you want me to know?"

"Remember that one time in Elementary school when you had this crush on this girl Jessica and then suddenly she wasn't interested at all in you?"

"Yeah, why?"

"I showed her a video of you chewing on your hair."

He threw his arms in the air. "Clary! How did you even get that video?"

Clary chuckled. "It wasn't necessarily hard. You were chewing your hair all the time. One of the reasons Dad decided to get it cut."

"That was my first real heartbreak I hadn't been going to the playground I met her on ever again after she told me she wasn't into me."

Now Clary was fully laughing, seeing how mad and cute Johnathan looked remembering that time.

"What is going on?"

John turned around and Clary stopped laughing. Their father was standing in the doorway, eyes bloodshot and hair looking as if he had been sleeping and they both quieted down.

"Clary just told me the story of how she destroyed my first ever love interest - "

"That, my son, wasn't a question I wanted an answer for. Now I think you should both get ready for school tomorrow."

"Wait, tomorrow? You didn't tell us." Clary stood up, her chair making an awful sound as it was pushed back.

"Now I do. You cannot stay at home all the time, just because your mother is dead. Now get ready or I will die too before you two actually start moving."

With that, he left the room.

 **I hope you liked it, and if you did you are welcome to leave a review! This is going to be a cute teenage high school love story because it makes my lonely self happy, and I don't know yet how many chapters it will have. I will try to update it weekly, even though I cannot guarantee anything!**

 **Till next time, ~ Brightbless**


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